Since the 1960s, advertising executives have integrated countercultural ideas so heavily into their advertisements that the very notion of counterculture has become quite mainstream. Cultural journalist Thomas Frank said it best in his 1998 cultural critique, "The Conquest of Cool," that, “[c]ommercial fantasies of rebellion, liberation, and outright 'revolution' against the stultifying demands of mass society are commonplace almost to the point of invisibility in advertising, movies, and television programming.”

The Line Between Art and Advertising Blurs

Frank’s spot-on example of this -- a 1994 Nike commercial featuring Beat poet William S. Burroughs -- demonstrates the lengths advertisers will go to make their products appear subversive. The same way that Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell Soup Can paintings blurred the line between advertising and art, advertisers actively invoke socially radical themes in order to blur the lines between counter- and mainstream culture -- all in order to sell everyday products.

The 1960s: The Birth of American Counterculture

The most significant American countercultural movement occurred during the 1960’s, a time of significant social and political turmoil for the nation. The youth-lead countercultural movement was disdainful of the government, large corporations and materialism. Advertisers of the time were quick to capitalize on the era’s liberal ethos. Advertisements that reflected the increasingly more lax social attitudes of that demographic, including ads with minority actors and more prevalent use of humor, irony and even sex. Around the same time, what has been called the “Creative Revolution” was taking hold of Madison Avenue. Traditional advertising agencies began to place a heavier emphasis on understated, concept-driven sales strategies over the hard-sell ads that dominated previous decades. Ad men even began to adopt the style and ideals of the countercultural groups they attempted to court. The rise in psychedelic imagery in ads directly correlated to the rise in drug use amongst creative agency executives, who believed the practice better qualified them to relate to youth culture.

Subculture and Advertising: 1990s-2000s

Outside of Burrough’s Nike cameo, other contemporary examples of this cross pollination of countercultural ideas in mainstream advertising are not difficult to find. Tommy Hilfiger helped catapult hip-hop culture to mainstream status during the 1990s when he marketed his company as the subculture’s definitive brand. During the same time, high fashion began a love affair with grunge subculture. Calvin Klein’s controversial ad campaign for the unisex fragrance CK One -- which featured an array of gaunt, disinterested models -- took heavy visual cues from an isolated Seattle-based grunge culture, and propelled the insular scene to worldwide prominence. Advertisers have naturally also been quick to capitalize on another prominent modern subcultural group, the urban hipster. For more than a decade, beer manufacturer Pabst Brewing Company has enjoyed recent success from its brand alignment to hipster culture. Even hair product manufacturer Garnier Fructis teamed up with prominent youth culture media outlet Vice Magazine to design a competition that will cast two hosts for a music and style Web series.

Millennials: The Next Target

The millennial generation, born between 1982 and 1993 and numbering 77 million according to Pew Research Center, are countercultural junkies. Forty percent of millennials admitted to having a tattoo -- a body modification process typically reserved for military men, sailors, gang members and subcultural archetypes. They are also more reliant on technology and social media platforms than previous generations, with three quarters of millennials indicating they had online profiles. Countercultural ideas continue to play more prominently into mainstream culture, and social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube only help speed this process along. With millennials poised to become the largest consumer generation in history, advertisers continue to sharpen their focus on this demographic through appeals to youthful rebellion.